Nebraska governor won’t honor book by ‘political activist’ who has criticized Trump

In this Jan. 3, 2019 photo, Gov. Pete Ricketts speaks during an interview in his office in Lincoln, Neb. Ricketts is preparing to start his second and final term in office next week with a focus on jobs, lowering taxes and promoting Nebraska domestically and abroad. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik) Nati HarnikAP

In this Jan. 3, 2019 photo, Gov. Pete Ricketts speaks during an interview in his office in Lincoln, Neb. Ricketts is preparing to start his second and final term in office next week with a focus on jobs, lowering taxes and promoting Nebraska domestically and abroad. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik) Nati HarnikAP

Nebraska’s Republican governor Pete Ricketts has refused to sign a proclamation honoring a book about a farm family in the state, calling the author a “political activist” and suggesting the book is divisive.

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But on Monday, Ricketts told reporters that “If you just go look, this author has been a political activist, has been very critical of our national leaders and so forth, and not really saying things that are going to bring Nebraskans together, but really trying to be somebody who is more divisive,” according to the World-Herald.

“I think it’s really disappointing and shocking that the governor would say he doesn’t want the people of Nebraska to hear from a farm family that’s been confronting major issues, and to hear their thoughts as they work through them and try to keep the farm in the family for the next generation,” he told the World-Herald.

“We tend to think of farmers as distant from the modern world and the cares of politics, but a farmer in the combine in Hamilton or York county is more at the nexus of international policies set by the U.S. government than anybody,” Genoways told the Lincoln newspaper.

Rick Gash hopes to capitalize on a change in federal law that allows for the industrial production of hemp. The 2018 farm bill declassifies hemp as a controlled substance. Gash plans to use 69 acres of his Butler County property to grow hemp.

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Genoways, who was a teenager when he moved to Nebraska where both his parents are from, has been “exploring narratives of how America reaps its food” for more than 15 years, according to a 2017 profile by the Nieman Storyboard, a publication of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

“In 2014, Genoways documented modern workers in the industrial meat industry with his nonfiction book “The Chain: Farm, Factory and The Fate of Our Food.”

He is not shy about sounding off on social media and in interviews about how Trump administration policies affect farmers in the field. In October 2017 he wrote a piece for The Washington Post about how the White House “isn’t helping American farmers.”

The same month, as he discussed his book, he talked to NPR “about the death of small towns and how it helped created a Trump presidency — even as he stands for policies that threaten to destroy rural economies,” he told his Facebook followers.

In “This Blessed Earth,” Genoways and his wife, photographer Mary Anne Andrei, spent a year following Nebraska soybean farmer Rick Hammond and his family “to give farmers a voice in a system where they are often talked about or dictated to, but rarely heard from,” Genoways told Nieman.

“It’s an award-winning book,” Rod Wagner, director of the Nebraska Library Commission, told the World-Herald. “It’s received national attention. Of course there are ideas in the book that people will not agree to, but I think that’s also a reason why it makes for a good one to consider and discuss.

“It’s a contrast of the modern farm with that of 40 years ago. It’s one that’s a subject of interest across Nebraska. People who have disagreements with ideas in the book will be able to talk about those.”

Authors whose books have been selected as One Book One Nebraska choices in the past criticized the governor’s decision.

“Withholding or rescinding ceremonial honors is petty and shows a narrowness of spirit and of mind,” he tweeted. “More importantly, it’s a message to educators in public schools & universities and now to librarians & humanities officials: Don’t give a platform to opposing viewpoints.”

Maybe he doesn’t like the fact that the family at the center of the book has been affected by the #KeystoneXL pipeline project and opposes it—while he supports building the pipeline.

Maybe he doesn't like the fact that the book was endorsed by @WillieNelson, a staunch advocate for farmer rights and a co-founder of @FarmAid, which has also staked out a position critical of Trump's trade policies.

Or maybe @GovRicketts just doesn’t like me—and the fact that I contributed local reporting to a @WashingtonPost story about a botched execution he ordered in August, after he had worked hard to get his right to execute prisoners reinstated.https://t.co/i7jcHv6ZdN

All I can say for sure is that @GovRicketts is politicizing the naming of a One Book One Nebraska selection by demanding that the panel apply a political litmus test, only picking books that match with his goals or remain silent about them.

The governor told reporters on Monday that he gets to decide who he signs a proclamation for.

“Which is true,” the Journal Star wrote. “In 2017, Ricketts refused to sign a proclamation to honor the Nebraska State Education Association’s 150th anniversary. More recently, he pulled Nebraska Navy Admiralships from both a UNL professor and a graduate student/instructor.”

“I hope that people will read the book and see for themselves that it’s not what the governor is portraying it as,” Genoways told the Journal Star.

Story from the @OWHnews w/ comments from @GovRicketts. Strange that the governor objects to the book without reading it. Maybe if he gives it a try, he'll find that it's not the book he imagines. Ricketts says he dislikes division. So let's read & talk. https://t.co/VhvjX2iShn